How does your slide start? How to re-engage?

mkculs13
mkculs13 Posts: 688 Member
edited December 24 in Health and Weight Loss
I was reading another thread and realized that at least once, my slide back to bad habits began when I decided I could keep trigger foods in my house--I felt I had gained enough practice and self-discipline to eat them in "sensible" portions. Sure, for the first week or two . . .

Another clue I'm starting to lose steam on my plan is that I stop weighing daily. This usually happens in the winter, when I don't want to stand naked for the 10 seconds it takes to weigh myself, thinking "No big deal; I'll weigh sometime this week."

Getting busy and not planning what I will eat--"knowing" I can eat certain fast food items and stay within my calorie budget. All well and good, until I start adding a little of this or that to my fast food order, and b/c I am in a busy season, it starts to happen daily.

Those are a few of the things I can think of that seem to be a sign my efforts are flagging.

As I write this, I'm planning ways to address my early warning signals. I need to accept that I may never be able to keep trigger foods in my house. I have no problem with buying a single serving size, so why would I "need" to stop doing what works (yes, it does bother me that my plan is not as environmentally friendly as it could b, and that it costs more $ to buy in single serving sizes, but those are excuses I need to work around, not surrender to). This winter, I caught myself when making a decision not to weigh, and just did it--almost every day. This is the first winter in at least a decade I haven't gained back what I lost the previous summer.

I don't have a plan yet for addressing the issue of getting busy (busy compared to my usual routines, that is). Will be thinking on this.

How about you? I expect others have noticed warning signals I may get myself but haven't realized that's what they are.

Replies

  • lightenup2016
    lightenup2016 Posts: 1,055 Member
    As I approach maintenance in another 10 lbs or so...I wish I knew!! I’m honestly not sure how it starts for me. Diet fatigue? Distraction by something new in life (good or bad)? I do think it has involved not continuing to log, but then, I don’t know what has precipitated that. I am hoping that I’ve got things figured out better now, since this time around, weight loss has been a lot easier than other times. So I’m hoping to continue as I am, only with a couple hundred extra calories than now.

    I’d love to hear other insights as well!
  • ReenieHJ
    ReenieHJ Posts: 9,724 Member
    Ugh I'm in the middle of a slide right now and have avoided my scale because I don't want to see. :( Each day I start anew, thinking I'll track every single bite. Well, that doesn't happen. When I first started nothing entered my mouth that I didn't mean to eat and write down. I could say no and mean it. Now it's becoming more of a mindless thing. I need to become recommitted and more mindful of every time I put even a bite into my mouth. That's the key; don't get lazy and think what's one more bite? One more taste?
    I worked hard to get below ideal weight, thinking I'd have a couple lbs. to spare. Unfortunately, it only takes a day to add that weight back on and much longer to recapture the right mindset.

  • ElizabethKalmbach
    ElizabethKalmbach Posts: 1,415 Member
    My slides always start as a 3 week vacation off routine that doesn't pick the routine back up immediately after I get home. OFTEN this is because the routine has to change from what it was BEFORE vacation because the kiddo goes back to school and/or I come back from vacation with new responsibilities or ailments.

    Sometimes my slides start because of a new illness/deficiency and they keep going until I can get a doctor to sort me out. This last slide took 4 different doctors to sort me out and the extra month of figuring added 10 lbs. >_<

    I've decided that I need to track *activity level* in addition to food intake, as a rather steep drop in activity level was what caused my last significant gain - though a good portion of it was water that went away very quickly once the medical issue was sorted.

    Having good fitness hardware has really helped me keep up with fluctuating activity level and my purchase of a Garmin VivoActive 3 totally justified itself this last month when I got the flu and stopped working out for the better part of 2 weeks to recover. I still lost one pound over two weeks, RIGHT ON SCHEDULE, because I was able to track my burn data each day and eat accordingly.

    I always regret not logging when I AM logging, because I never have data available for comparison purposes when I hit a blip. >_<
  • riffraff2112
    riffraff2112 Posts: 1,756 Member
    Ever since I was a youngster, I always gained weight in the winter and worked hard in the summer to get back to being skinny. As I got older, I was chubby most the year, and fat in the winter. As I slipped into middle age, I fear to report that I was fat all year and obese in the winter. Five years ago I reeled it in and lost about 45 lbs and I have been able to maintain within a window of 10-20lbs since then.

    I still slip back in winter. I stop going out as much, spend way more time sitting and tend to snack a lot more at night from general boredom and inactivity. Our winters are really cold, and even though every year I try to get more active in the gym and try to monitor my eating better, the season coincides with extra duties at work (coaching basketball) and holidays and invariably I definitely lose momentum. I wish I had some tidbits of information to share with you as to how I overcame these slides...they still happen. I tend to get refocused about this time every year and have just kind of accepted that this is how life will look for me.
  • midlomel1971
    midlomel1971 Posts: 1,283 Member
    Without fail, it's always our end-of-summer beach vacation. I let myself relax and eat and drink whatever I want. And that's great...that's what vacations are for. But then I'm back home and we get in a stressful back-to-school mode, combined with a lot of football party eating and drinking, then it's the holidays and everything goes to *kitten*. Basically a lot of stress eating and laziness starts happening and I gain it back every. dang. time.

    I just have to make a point to get back to the gym asap after that.
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
    I doubt many people are lucky enough to gain weight for some reason, lose that weight in one effort, and maintain for the rest of their life,

    For the rest of us it is an iterative process. The not really a secret is not to repeat the same iteration more than once. Took me a long time to learn that secret. The other not really a secret is to start the next iteration as soon as the previous one ends. That is another lesson that took me too long to learn.

    What worked for me is that I absolutely took quitting off the table. Once you stop quitting you learn to keep refining things that are not working or that could be working better. You keep asking "why?" Why did this day go poorly? Why did this day take so much effort to get through successfully? Why did this day go so well? That last one is one that takes training, or at least it did for me. Identifying the components of a really successful day is as important as learning from mistakes.

    It is all a course study on yourself. You are learning how you behave while losing or maintaining. You are learning to manage yourself better. The mechanics of calories in vs calories out is quite simple. There are many ways to get there but finding your easiest path forward may require some trial and error.

  • Slashnl
    Slashnl Posts: 339 Member
    This is so interesting to me. I am right now working to get back on track after a pretty hefty slide. For me, it was an injury that kept me from doing the workouts I wanted to do. I had to take it easy, so for some reason, I also took it easy on tracking food. Then the bad habits start, with trigger foods making it back into my world. Logically, I look at it and I can't understand why my mind wouldn't think that if I can't workout, I have to really buckle down on the calories in part of the equation.

    So, bottom line for me is that if I am out of a routine, I am off my game. I have to figure out that a change in routine doesn't stop the entire process.
  • puffbrat
    puffbrat Posts: 2,806 Member
    My slides tend to start with me not tracking everything I eat. It's basically me not wanting to hold myself accountable in writing for what I'm eating. I recover from it by making myself get back to logging everything. That is much easier said than done but I've done it enough times to recognize that basic step as critically important to my weight loss.
  • sschauer513
    sschauer513 Posts: 313 Member
    My slides are related to the little lies we all tell ourselves but know them be a lie. The trigger foods is excellent example saying I've changed and can eat just 1 Oreo a day its a lie will always be a lie for me. People always ask how did I lose my weight and simple answer is I quit lying to myself. The reason people don't log and I'm guilty as everyone is not the time it takes it's the slap in the face when it is done accurately and people don't want to face that truth.
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